This week’s winner, Joshuapundit’s The Shut Down, And The Madness Of King Obama is my take on the current shutdown, the battle over ObamaCare and the debt ceiling and the spiteful and dysfunctional behavior of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Here’s a slice:

This shutdown is an amazing spectacle. And what it reveals about what America has become and about the state of our leadership would be sit-com worthy, except that it’s happening in real life as I write this, and isn’t funny in the least.

Government shutdowns are not all that unique – Democrat Tip O’Neill shut down the government eight times during the Regan administration, supposedly the Golden Age of ‘bi-partisanship’. And during the Clinton years, the government was shut down twice after Clinton rejected the budget. And here’s a fun fact. Popular mythology to the contrary, out of the 17 times the government has shut down, Democrats are much more prone to shut the government down than Republicans. The Democrats controlled the House during 15 of these shut downs and actually controlled both houses of Congress during 8 of them.

But what’s unique this time is that this is the first time a President and a majority leader from his party have absolutely refused to negotiate at all. In fact, President Obama has been almost totally disengaged, except for fits of explosive rhetoric aimed at ‘radical Republicans’ and the Tea Party. In contrast, both President Reagan and President Clinton were very hands on and seemed to acknowledge and even enjoy at times the give and take of negotiating as part of the job.

President Obama, in contrast, feels he shouldn’t even have to.

In an amazing instance of hubris, he actually went to the extent of finally inviting members of Congress to a meeting…for the sole purpose of telling them he wasn’t going to negotiate! Thank you, good night.

Another thing that unique about this shutdown is the off the charts rhetoric and actions emanating from the White House and its allies in Congress and the media towards anyone whom has the temerity to try and even suggest that the White House might need to negotiate some kind of compromise.

The monument in Washington to America’s WWII vets, a monument funded by private donations had no fence at all around. On the day of the shutdown, veterans visiting the monument to their heroism found the monument blocked off by barriers and manned, as Senator Rand Paul quipped ‘with more security than Obama had at Benghazi’. The vets, with the aid of a number of GOP congressman stormed the barriers.

The idea here is obvious – to make things unnecessarily painful for as many Americans as possible and try to spin it politically as the fault of ‘those evil Republicans’. It is a despicable tactic, and it says volumes about the kind of person President Obama is.

President Obama has also had the help of a number of his minions in the media. Andrew Sullivan and Salon’s Joan Walsh, among others have no problem putting the whole thing down to racism. Of course, that kind of attitude reveals a pretty racist mindset of its own, the belief that a president shouldn’t be held to the same standards simply because he happens to be black, but that’s meaningless in itself because I doubt even they believe racism is behind this. It’s merely a convenient tool to use to demonize people they disagree with, and it resonates with people who want to believe it.

Others have referred to the Tea Party ‘jihad’, the ‘Tea Party shutdown‘, called Republicans ‘radicals’ ‘deluded’ ‘bananna Republicans‘ arsonists and worse. And these are not people on the fringe,but mainstream writers working for mainstream media outlets.

The similarity in the venom of the rhetoric and messaging make it pretty obvious this is being co-ordinated out of the White House, like it always has been.

See you next week! Don’t forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week’s Watcher’s Forum, as the Council and their invited special guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day with short takes and weigh in…don’t you dare miss it. And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter…..’cause we’re cool like that!

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